The
collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in
Baltimore has sent shock waves throughout the
United States. The bridge was not built to
withstand a direct hit from a container ship as
large as the Dali,
which brought down the structure within minutes
after its engine failed and it became an
uncontrollable force drifting toward the bridge.
The
incident is a symbol of how unfettered
capitalism has resulted in safety concerns
becoming secondary to profits.
The
Dali, operated by shipping giant Maersk,
was carrying more than 800
tons of
corrosive and flammable materials.
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg likened
the 95,000-ton ship to an aircraft carrier and
the New
York Times explained
that “When the bridge was built, cargo ships
were not the size they are today.” In fact, such
ships have grown
steadily in
size over the past few decades. One economist
told the Times that shipping companies “did what
they thought was most efficient for
themselves—make the ships big—and they didn’t
pay much attention at all to the rest of the
world.” This in turn has forced nations to expand
waterways to
accommodate the behemoths, often at the expense
of the public.
Some 90
percent of
all traded goods that are shipped from one part
of the world to the other are transported by
water. As corporate appetites for profits have
increased, so has globalized trade. And, safety
concerns have taken a back seat, as per an
investigation published by Jacobin.
In
2023, the U.S.
Department of Labor investigated
a complaint against Maersk and concluded that
the company had violated the Seaman’s Protection
Act by retaliating against a whistleblower
employee. At stake was the fact that, as per the
Labor Department, “Reporting Policy requires
seamen to report safety concerns to the company
and allow it time to abate the conditions before
reporting to the [U.S. Coast Guard] or other
regulatory agencies.” In other words, Maersk,
which is one of the world’s
top shipping companies,
tried to protect itself from government
regulators.
A
similar scenario of compromising safety in
service of profits has unfolded at Boeing, one
of the world’s
top airplane manufacturers.
After an Alaska Airlines flight in January 2024
was forced to make an emergency landing when the
Boeing 737 Max plane lost a panel mid-flight,
the New York Times published a bizarrely
headlined story: “Boeing
Faces Tricky Balance Between Safety and
Financial Performance.”
The story points out a conundrum for Boeing’s
executives: “Should they emphasize safety or
financial performance?”
The
Times explained that, for years the company “put
too much emphasis on increasing profits and
enriching shareholders with dividends and share
buybacks, and not enough on investing in
engineering and safety.”
It’s
worth stating the obvious: An unsafe aircraft is
not an aircraft, it’s a death trap. And yet,
within a capitalist framework, everything boils
down to a cost-benefit analysis. If the cost of
safety for companies like Boeing or Maersk
outweighs the financial benefits, it’s simply
not worth it for executives and shareholders.
While the Alaska Airlines flight thankfully did
not result in any deaths this time, hundreds of
people on board 737s in 2018
and 2019 were
not so lucky. Workers at Boeing factories in
Washington and South Carolina where aircraft are
assembled are required to work at breakneck
speed and compromise on safety in the interest
of churning out planes as fast as possible.
Who
pays the price for such corporate hubris?
Vulnerable workers and the public. In the case
of the Baltimore bridge accident, all 22
workers on
board the Dali were of Indian origin and their
quick thinking in notifying authorities that the
ship lost power helped ensure that casualties
were minimized. As of this writing, they remain
trapped on
board the ship with one worker having been treated at
a hospital for minor injuries.
Meanwhile,
the six people who are presumed dead and two who
were rescued from the frigid waters were all
immigrant workers from Mexico
and Central America,
working on the bridge as part of a construction
crew.
These
are the same sort of people who suffer racist
attacks and ridicule from white supremacist
forces in the U.S. A right-wing outlet posted
a virulently
racist cartoon of
the Dali’s crew on social media. And only weeks
earlier, Georgia’s unhinged ultraconservative
Congressional representative Marjorie
Taylor Greene heckled
President Joe Biden during his State of the
Union address about a white woman who “was
killed by an illegal,” in an attempt to whip up
anti-immigrant frenzy.
Greene
appeared utterly unconcerned about the fact that
construction workers in the U.S. hail disproportionately from
Latin American immigrant communities and many
die from work-related injuries. According to
the Bureau
of Labor Statistics,
in 2022, “Foreign-born Hispanic or Latino
workers accounted for 63.5 percent (792) of
total Hispanic or Latino worker fatalities
(1,248).”
Taxpayers
also pay the price for corporate profiteering at
the expense of safety. The U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers is
apparently footing the bill for the massive
cleanup operation from the Baltimore bridge
accident. And, President Biden announced that
the federal government would “pay the entire
cost of reconstructing that bridge.”
Meanwhile, Grace
Ocean Private,
the Singapore-based company that owns the Dali,
is expected to invoke a centuries-old maritime
law to limit its liability—the same law that the
owners of the RMS Titanic used to limit theirs.
In
the case of Boeing, the state of Washington in
2013 gave the company the largest
ever tax break in
the state’s history in exchange for housing its
factory and spurring the creation of jobs. The
cost to taxpayers was nearly $9 billion. And,
because Washington’s governor failed to make job
retention a condition for the massive tax break,
Boeing then had it both ways when it cut its
labor costs by slashing about 15 percent of its
workforce in the state a few years later.
Washington eventually eliminated
the tax break but
Boeing still reaps tens of millions of dollars
in other state-level incentives tied to
aerospace manufacturing.
It’s
critically important to contextualize accidents
that are the result of corporations putting
profits over safety and people. These incidents
are not isolated or unpredictable. They are the
cost of doing business—a cost that the rest of
us pay for in money and lives.
This
commentary was produced by Economy
for All,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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BlackCommentator.com
Guest
Commentator, Sonali
Kolhatkar is
the
host
and producer of Uprising,
a popular,
daily, drive-time program on KPFK,
Pacifica
Radio in Los Angeles and co-
director
of the Afghan Women's Mission,
a US-based non-profit organization that
works
with the Revolutionary Association
of
the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
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